PROJECT
South Africa Young Reporter’s Network site at Radio Atlantis, the youth radio show is called ‘Teen Express’

On Monday, Wednesday and Thursday I go to Radio Atlantis when school gets out. My spirit lifts up, because I’m around all these great guys that come up with creative ideas that we can use to produce our show and broadcast them.

THURSDAYS
We arrive at the radio station at 3.00 and we plan and organise who will go where in the community. At 3.30 we go in partners to different places in Atlantis and ask people in the community what topics we should talk about on our radio show. In our community we have lots of problems that young people face, like drugs, violence, unemployment – so we usually get a lot of suggestions! We have to get back to the station at 4.30 latest, when we’re all back we share what topics we found and choose one, the rest we write down in our ‘topic ideas’ book for later shows. We then start planning what formats we’ll record, like vox pops, profiles, interviews and then we decide who is going to record what. We leave the station to go home at 5.30 and then we have until Monday to record.

MONDAYS
On Mondays we get to the radio station at 3.00 and we get together and play our recordings to one another, we give each other feedback and see if anything needs to be re-recorded. We are also learning to edit, so sometimes we rotate turns and our facilitator Rishie helps us edit the recordings. We then decide who is going to present that week, it’s always two people that host the show together. We leave at 5.30 and if you are presenting you have go come home and write a script to help you present the show.

WEDNESDAYS
Wednesdays are when we go live on air! Our show is from 4.00 to 6.00, but we come earlier, at 3.00, especially the presenters, so that we can practice the script together before we go live. Even though we don’t all have to be there when the show is being broadcast, we really like being together as a team and seeing how the shows goes. I love being a part of Teen Express because there are issues that young people are facing in our community that we can’t ignore any more. Our show get’s young and old people to do something, with us, and try to yo find a solutions together.